Hans Asperger
Hans Asperger was an early researcher of Autism and developed the early diagnostic criteria for what later became known as Asperger's Syndrome, which later was labeled "high-functioning" Autism and is now simply recognised as Autism. (coming soon) Timeline (see also Autism Timeline) https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/495/misdiagnosed-and-misunderstood "Pediatrician Hans Asperger began working on autism even earlier than Kanner, in the 1930s. His University of Vienna clinic was an unusually humane and compassionate institution — more of a residential school. ... Instead of comparing the children to some monolithic, artificial, narrow definition of normality, Asperger tried to figure out what each child needed to thrive. The only kinds of behavior considered problematic in Asperger’s clinic were those that created problems for the children themselves." "Asperger believed that autism is common, saying that once you learn to recognize its distinctive traits, you see them everywhere. He presciently viewed the condition as being what we now call a “spectrum.” He recognized that autistic kids spanned the range from those who could barely function without assistance to those who had the potential to become professors, as one of his former patients did."https://thesunmagazine.org/issues/495/misdiagnosed-and-misunderstood "This same boy, when he got to the university, detected an error in one of Isaac Newton’s proofs. Asperger said this success wasn’t because the patient had been “cured.” He was still “blatantly autistic” and would pass people he knew in the street without recognizing them. (Face blindness is fairly common among autistic people.) But Asperger knew that some autistic people could do amazing things if they got proper support and weren’t expected to act like nonautistic people." "Asperger’s findings were forgotten because his clinic was in Austria, and in 1938 the German army marched over the mountains to claim that country for the “Fatherland.” Before long the new regime started passing eugenics laws to purge the human gene pool of hereditary disabilities." "One of the long-standing myths in the autism community is that Asperger saw only “high-functioning” children. That’s because in his first public talk on autism in 1938, to an audience of Nazis, he spoke only of his “most promising cases.” He wanted to emphasize his patients’ positive traits to save them from the eugenics program. He suggested that, because of their enhanced pattern-recognition skills, some autistic people would make good code breakers. The Nazis did not take his advice, and instead went on to kill Asperger’s patients." "For most of the twentieth century Asperger’s work was unknown, and his scholarly papers were not translated from the German. Why? Because Leo Kanner, the world’s leading authority on autism, did not mention his work, even though when Kanner “discovered” autism in 1943, he was working with one of Asperger’s closest associates ... Kanner’s only mention of Asperger’s findings came in a dismissive book review he wrote for a psychology journal in the 1970s. He said Asperger had at best discovered a “forty-second cousin” of autism. Kanner had successfully buried Asperger in history." Alternate Analysis: Nazi Supporter |NYTimes:/2018/The Nazi History Behind ‘Asperger’> "Asperger at first warned against classifying children, writing in 1937 that “it is impossible to establish a rigid set of criteria for a diagnosis.” But right after the Nazi annexation of Austria in 1938 — and the purge of his Jewish and liberal associates from the University of Vienna — Asperger introduced his own diagnosis of social detachment: “autistic psychopathy.” As Asperger sought promotion to associate professor, his writings about the diagnosis grew harsher. He stressed the “cruelty” and “sadistic traits” of the children he studied, itemizing their “autistic acts of malice.” He also called autistic psychopaths “intelligent automata.” Some laud Asperger’s language about the “special abilities” of children on the “most favorable” end of his autistic “range,” speculating that he applied his diagnosis to protect them from Nazi eugenics — a kind of psychiatric Schindler’s list. But this was in keeping with the selective benevolence of Nazi psychiatry; Asperger also warned that “less favorable cases” would “roam the streets” as adults, “grotesque and dilapidated.” Words such as these could be a death sentence in the Third Reich. And in fact, dozens of children whom Asperger evaluated were killed." Neurology https://www.autismuk.com/home-page/history-of-autism/ (TW: historical revision of Asperger's complicity with Nazi eugenics programs) :"Asperger called children with AS “little professors,” because of their ability to talk about their favorite subject in great detail.He was convinced that many would use their special talents in adulthood." :"Ironically, as a child Hans Asperger appears to have exhibited features of the very condition named after him. He was described as a remote and lonely child, who had difficulty making friends. He was talented in language, in particular he was interested in the German poet Franz Grillparzer whose poetry he would frequent quote to his uninterested classmates." References Category:Autism Spectrum Category:Psychiatrist Category:Neuroscience